Hot, Flat, and Crowded Why We Need a Green Revolution — and How It Can Renew America

By Thomas L. Friedman

Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2008, 438 pp., $27.95 hardcover

Thomas Friedman is a powerhouse author — someone who apparently only has to pick up the phone to talk or meet with political, industrial, economic, and intellectual leaders all over the globe. In Hot, Flat, and Crowded, he has written perhaps the most important policy-oriented book of the year.

While Hot, Flat, and Crowded is not about urbanism per se, issues that concern new urbanists are always lurking just under the surface, and sometimes they bubble right up to the top. “What kind of America would you like to see — an America with more and more urban sprawl devouring more and more open lands, or a green America [emphasis Friedman] where cities start to grow upward rather than outward, where mass transit becomes the norm rather than mass traffic jams, and where the only new buildings are green buildings?” he asks near the end of Chapter 1. I don’t believe such a question was ever posed so bluntly in a bestseller before.

At times Friedman is too enamored with what architect Steve Mouzon calls “gizmo green” — a belief that technology will save us environmentally. But make no mistake: he is also a friend of urbanists. If the US goes in the direction that Friedman recommends — taxing carbon, for example, to spur clean energy, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and make us less dependent on oil — mixed-use, compact development and mass transit will get a big boost.

Friedman makes a strong case that global warming is threatening the future of our planet, but he doesn’t stop there. Such a case appeals mostly to environmental ethicists, one of the four groups that planner Andres Duany has identified as having a potential interest in going green. In addition to the ethicist group (symbolized by Al Gore), Duany has categorized environmentalists as trendsetters (consumers who buy green if the price is right), opportunists (who see potential profits), and survivalists (the most pessimistic group). There’s a fifth group that Duany calls the apathetics — but I’ll get back to them later. Friedman does not use these terms and is probably unaware of them, but he nevertheless appeals mostly to trendsetters and opportunists — which Duany himself identifies as key leverage groups in America on green issues.

Friedman makes two broad arguments to win over his target audience. One is that reducing our dependence on oil is the only way to defeat the Bin Ladens of the world — otherwise we are financing both sides of a never-ending war on terror. The second point is that we are entering a new period of history, which he calls the Climate-Energy Era. There are huge opportunities and profits to be made, Friedman says, and we can either take the lead in this or fall behind the rest of the world economically.
For the trendsetters, the author paints an appealing picture of a techno-green future that would merge the best of the Internet with renewable energy. One weakness of the book, from a new urbanist perspective, is that Friedman could have appealed to the trendsetters with a vision of beautiful mixed-use neighborhoods with mass transit. Alas, that vision is missing.

Optimistic about ingenuity
The opportunists are highly influential and include many of the Washington elite. They are optimists — politicians have to be or they wouldn’t get elected — and Friedman is also optimistic. Although many of the predictions in the book are dire, he also says, “The one natural resource that the world has left in infinite quantity is human ingenuity.” This shows that he is not a Malthusian — which would be the kiss of death with opportunists. He also favors nuclear power, and yes, more drilling.

Friedman makes an interesting analogy that distinguishes his thinking from the reigning economic theory of the last three decades. “Markets are not just open fields to which you simply add water and then sit back in a lawn chair, watch whatever randomly sprouts, and assume that the best outcome will always result,” he says. “No, markets are like gardens. You have to intelligently design and fertilize them — with the right taxes, regulations, incentives, and disincentives — so they yield the good, healthy crops necessary for you to survive.” Up until now, to the extent that the market has been designed at all, it has favored the cheap, dirty fuel triumvirate of oil, coal, and natural gas, he says.

To make systematic changes in the energy economy, Americans will have to make sacrifices. They must accept taxes and regulations that discourage dirty power from carbon-emitting sources — and subsidize what he calls “clean power innovation.” An indirect tax through a cap-and-trade-system would work, Friedman says, but he is lukewarm on this idea. He favors straightforward taxes that could be offset by lower payroll taxes to help the poor and middle class. If Americans cannot be convinced that taxes and regulations discouraging dirty fuels are acceptable, “then we really are lost,” he says.

Duany’s apathetics — another name might be “know-nothings” — will never be convinced that taxes and regulations are the answer. Friedman describes the mindset as “dumb as we wanna be.” This mindset is the soul of NIMBYs everywhere who oppose density and anything they perceive as being against their narrowly defined self-interest.

Friedman’s answer to this group is patriotism. In the Climate-Energy Era, Friedman argues, green is the new red, white, and blue. If America doesn’t step up with an ambitious and serious plan to fight global warming, we are not only selling out our children but also telling the rest of the world, in essence, to drop dead. “Precisely because America’s capitalist system and research universities, are, in combination, still the most powerful innovation engine ever created, the world cannot effectively address the big problems of the Energy-Climate Era — quickly and at scale — without America, its president, its government, its industry, its markets, and its people either leading the revolution or aspiring to do so,” he says.

In the process, Friedman says, we will “make America stronger, and by giving it more options, also make America freer in the era that we are heading in.” Such a call to arms might just bring together everyone who is open to an environmental message — from the ethicists to the opportunists — and overwhelm the naysayers who oppose any change.